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By Milan Simonich
The New Mexican
Democrats gave Republican Gov. Susana Martinez a scathing review for her State of the State speech on Tuesday.
"I thought it was gimmicky," said state Sen. Bill Soules, a teacher from Las Cruces, who was chosen by Democratic legislative leaders to respond to the governor.
Soules said Martinez had selectively used statistics, omitted any mention of the chaos in behavioral health care and ignored the kicking death last month of a 9-year-old boy from Albuquerque.
Soules raised the horrific child-abuse case to criticize Martinez for inadequate staffing at the Children, Youth and Families Department. Even though legislators had appropriated generous budgets for state agencies, Soules said, Martinez failed to hire enough staff.
About $6 million went unspent last year by the Children, Youth and Families Department. In all, $65 million was returned to the state treasury by the administration, but taxpayers were shortchanged because critical work was not done, Soules said.
He also criticized Martinez for saying nothing about her administration cutting funding to 15 mental health agencies. Martinez's Human Services Department said it had found credible allegations of fraud, so it replaced the New Mexico providers with Arizona companies last year.
State Attorney General Gary King, a Democrat who is running for governor, last week cleared one agency, The Counseling Center in Alamogordo. His investigation of the others is ongoing.

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Though Martinez spoke for 47 minutes, Soules said, she did not say a word about the state's most pervasive problem -- poverty. Thirty-seven percent of children in New Mexico live in poverty, and that is the biggest obstacle to improved academic performance by schoolchildren, Soules said.
But instead of dealing with the root cause, Soules said, Martinez manipulated statistics to push for retention of thousands of third-graders who are below par on reading tests.
Martinez said the most compassionate state policy would be to hold back third-graders struggling with reading. As it stands, they are being promoted and then become "four times more likely to drop out" of school.
"That's not an opinion. It's a fact," Martinez said.
Soules countered that it's a falsehood. He said no scientific research backs up the governor's claim.
Soules, who holds a doctorate in education and psychology from New Mexico State University, says he was a below-average reader in third grade. Kids who do not read proficiently need extra help, but mass retentions would lead to more dropouts, Soules said.
He said Martinez had "cherry-picked" and misrepresented one part of an old report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to try to support her position for holding back students, an issue she campaigned on four years ago. "We need someone who will lead and govern, not play politics," Soules said.
In addition to criticizing Martinez, Democrats in the Legislature said they would push two constitutional amendments to help lift people from poverty.
One would siphon more than $100 million a year from the land-grant endowment to increase spending for early-childhood education programs. The other would raise the minimum wage, now $7.50 an hour in much of New Mexico. Santa Fe's minimum wage of $10.51 an hour would not be affected by the amendment.
But a divide exists, even among Democrats, on tapping the $12 billion endowment for early-childhood programs.
Sen. John Arthur Smith of Deming, chairman of the finance committee, opposes the idea as irresponsible. The endowment now helps fund K-12 education, and Smith said he did not want to erode the principal.
Milan Simonich can be reached at 986-3080 or msimonich@sfnewmexican.com. Follow his Ringside Seat blog on the New Mexican website.

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